Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/07/26/late-bloomers-10-classic-book.html
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To be fair, Joyce certainly was a perverted lunatic who made a specialty of the literature of the latrine. Proud of it, too, judging by his letters.
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Free and independent criticism is important.
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i’ve read in the vicinity of 16,000 books in my lifetime so far. cathy and heathcliff are easily the two most vile protagonists of any novel i have read. one of the few books i almost didn’t finish and solely because i hated spending time with those characters.
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Please tell me I’m not the only one who, despite all the best intentions and multiple attempts, has never been able to get past the first 10 pages of Moby Dick.
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There’s also that anecdote of Germany’s late most famous critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki who commented Günter Grass’s masterpiece The Tin Drum with “He’s not a German writer, he’s a Bulgarian spy!”. Fun fact: Reich-Ranicki used to be a polish spy.
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I was in a thrift store the other day and picked up a copy of Moby Dick, only to have the person standing next to me immediately go into a rant about how horrible it was, which kind of shocked me-- I never realized how much some people revile that book.
All I can say is there are a lot of books that are difficult reads that turn out to be revelatory if you can get a certain distance into them and get the feel/rhythm of the language. Some of my favorite books I gave up on the first time.
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That seems like a remarkably pithy and accurate review of Lolita tho.
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It’s got some spectacular writing, but the story itself is too much for me to stomach.
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Perhaps this guy was forced to read the book in school and write an essay with 1347 words on the author, his work and the society of his time. No wonder he hated the book if it happened.
I agree with you. Some books require a certain distance and maturity from the reader. A little time, experience and patience make us see the works of art with different eyes.
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Supposedly, the most common complaint about the Awakening when it came out was that Chopin’s previous work was great, but the Awakening is mediocre and dull and didn’t live up to the expectations Chopin had set as an author. I can’t comment on the earlier work, but “mediocre and dull” pinned down the Awakening pretty accurately.
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Moby Dick is a great book, but it’s anything but an easy read. Melville’s mid-19th century style, complete with deliberate archaisms and style changes, would put a lot of readers off even without his regular historical-philosophical digressions, chiefly (but not limited to) whaling-related.
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I always found Virginia Woolf’s snobbish dislike of Ulysses interesting.
“An illiterate, underbred book, it seems to me; the book of a self-taught working man, and we all know how distressing they are, how egotistic, insistent, raw, striking, and ultimately nauseating.”
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It’s good to know that I’m not the only one to have left that book aside.
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Listen while reading.
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this post and discussion has made me realize that The Silmarillion is the Moby Dick of the Tolkien oeuvre. Its dense, deliberately archaic style turns off so many within the first 10 pages, but if you can stick with it, it’s super rewarding. i’ve read The Silmarillion at least 3 or 4 times, and i love it more every time i go through it – but i’ve never been able to get into Moby Dick.
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Note in regards to public libraries banning books in the late 19th century, a common core principle of Progressive Era American libraries was ‘improving’ common people. They bought and promoted uplifting books. They actively avoided works found to be offensive. Being popular was not a reason to carry a book. Libraries have changed a great deal over the last 150 years.
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The first 10 pages are probably the best. Actually liked it at first. then he started going on and on and on about the natural history of whales and, in the end, got it wrong. Whales are not fish.
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That’s interesting, because the first 10 pages are what got me hooked. The ennui and wanderlust expressed by Ishmael in ‘Loomings’ are so relatable, and the following few chapters so hilarious, that it generated plenty of momentum to get me through the difficult parts (which really aren’t that difficult once you acclimate to the language. Of course, it helps that I’m a nut for sea stories). It’s hands-down my favorite novel, classic or otherwise.
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